Studio blog of Annie Bissett, an artist working with traditional Japanese woodblock printing (moku hanga)

27 August 2009

The Other Side of the Story

Photo from PBS, "We Shall Remain" Part 1

After several weeks packed with illustration work, this week I've had a couple of days back in the studio. I've spent most of that time working on sketches for the next couple of prints. Nothing to show you yet, but I can tell you that I'm planning 6 or 7 new prints in the Pilgrim series. These next prints will tell the story from the Native American point of view.

In the early 1600s, the area now known as New England was heavily populated by a number of native peoples. In fact, French explorer Samuel de Champlain reported on his first visit to Massachusetts that it was too populated to successfully colonize. The people of eastern Massachusetts that the Pilgrims had the most contact with were the Wampanoag. Here's a map showing the basic tribal nations of Massachusetts (click to see a larger view).

If you'd like to know more about the history of the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag, I highly recommend watching the first episode of the PBS series "We Shall Remain." Episode 1, called "After the Mayflower," can be viewed in its entirety on the web site.

2 comments:

good to hear that you are back in the studio and planning some new moku hanga......and your view on things that you want to make print series of are so interesting and I love to read about your thoughts and the facts you put on as texts too as wll as seeing the photos of your work and process....and I´m learning much too....